Advisor Group, the AIG-owned group of independent broker-dealers, said Wednesday that Erica McGinnis is the network's new president and CEO.
McGinnis, who most recently was the group's senior vice president and chief compliance officer, replaces interim Advisor Group head Peter Harbeck, who was tapped to lead the firm in early September after then-CEO and President Larry Roth left the firm to become CEO of Realty Capital Securities.
(RCS, the nontraded REIT broker-dealer and wholesaler arm of RCS Capital, which is led by Nicholas Schorsch, said Wednesday that it was buying Investors Capital, in independent broker-dealer.)
"I have enormous respect for Larry Roth," said McGinnis in an interview with ThinkAdvisor. "He opened doors for me and encouraged me to walk through them, so I owe him a lot."
McGinnis says that she will not try to "fill his shoes."
"We have different skills, and I would love to put some of my focus on the Advisor Group staff of 800 across the firm," she said. "The core of our business is about serving advisors and taking care of these employees, too, since they deliver the great services to our network."
The Advisor Group begins its national conference, ConnectED, in Las Vegas on Saturday. The event ends next Thursday, "and then we return our core management focus to the growth strategies of 2014," she says.
Advisor Group includes more than 6,000 independent reps, who are affiliated with FSC Securities Corp., Royal Alliance Associates, SagePoint Financial and the recently acquired Woodbury Financial.
"We are making the transition smooth for Woodbury," McGinnis said. "As other [broker-dealer networks] have streamlined their operations, we have very much done so as well with our back office. That's allowed us to really go into a growth mode."
